Blue and yellow Ukrainian flag on the shoulders, Iryna Gaïeva, who came to demonstrate on Saturday in Kharkiv, about forty kilometers from the Russian border, has a simple message: “We don’t want Russia”.
Ukraine, “it’s my homeland”, explains this retiree met by AFP during a “Unity March” which brought together several thousand people in Ukraine’s second city at the call including nationalist organizations.
“I was born in Crimea”, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed in 2014 by Russia, she says.
“They have already taken a homeland from me, that’s enough! I grew up here, I live here, my parents are from Russia, but I don’t want to see occupants,” she adds. “This is my house, these are my rules”.
Moscow has massed more than 100,000 soldiers along the Ukrainian border, which makes Westerners fear an offensive in Ukraine, which Russia denies preparing: it replies that NATO threatens its security, demanding the end of the enlargement of the Alliance and the withdrawal of its forces from Eastern Europe.
An industrial and university center of one and a half million inhabitants, many Russian-speaking, Kharkiv, more than 400 kilometers east of the capital Kiev and in the immediate vicinity of the Russian border, is therefore directly concerned.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself explicitly mentioned the possibility that Kharkiv would be “occupied” in the event of the Russians’ continued “escalation”: “They are going to do that in territories historically populated by people with family ties to Russia”.
– “Anger” –
In 2014, the Moscow-backed separatist insurgency that erupted in eastern Ukraine after a pro-Western revolution was marked by violence there, as pro-Russian rebels attacked the regional administration with molotov cocktails.
Some then saw Kharkiv following the path of Donetsk and Lugansk, which have since become the two “capitals” of the self-proclaimed republics by the separatists at war against the Ukrainian troops, a conflict which has killed more than 13,000 people and continues. But the Ukrainian forces intervened quickly to restore calm.
“In 2014, it was panic,” recalls Iryna Gaïeva. “This time, there is no panic, but anger: do you want to come? Come!” he column of Russian tanks, after crossing the border, could arrive in Kharkiv in an hour. Or the time it takes to go to the supermarket.
At his side, Nadia Rynguina is even more categorical. “In 2014, the question arose: should we shoot the Russians? The question no longer arises. The Russians did not ask themselves any questions”.
“The situation has changed, we have an army worthy of the name, we have citizens ready to defend the country,” she said.
In the event of intervention, Yuri Chmyliov, 79, warns that “it will not be a walk in the park” for the Russian army. “In 2014, we were afraid to display a blue and yellow flag here. Now look,” he said, pointing to the crowd gathered.
– “Constant threat” –
Behind a large “Kharkiv is Ukraine” banner, protesters marched between the two main squares, chanting patriotic slogans, singing the national anthem or carrying signs on which they thank the British and Americans who deliver arms to Ukraine.
According to Galyna Kuts, a political scientist from Kharkiv present at the demonstration, President Zelensky’s statements about a possible occupation of the city have caused concern.
“Everyone was calling to ask what to do, where to flee,” she said. But “Kharkiv has lived under the constant threat of invasion for almost nine years. In a way, we got used to it, but people have changed, they have experience in survival, they know how to react when wounded are brought in” from the front.
Oleksandre Guérassimov has thus refueled and is ready to evacuate his family if necessary. But this 39-year-old man, demonstrating in the name of “values”, says he is “quiet” and does not believe in an invasion: “With the current level of preparation (Ukrainian side), Russia would suffer intolerable losses”.
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